Catherine Rose played through the pain of a freak self-inflicted injury en route to winning the first LTA Grade One title of the year at last weekend’s HOP Open at Surge Padel in Harrogate.
Top seeds Catherine and Victoria Nicholas beat Helen Crook and Jo Ward 6-2, 6-1 in the women’s final, but the victory came at a price for Catherine who managed to hit herself in the face with her racket at 5-1 up in the first set.
Backpedalling to retrieve a forehand that popped up higher than expected off the grill, she jolted her racket upwards and struck herself between the eyes. Here is the clip of the incident:
Speaking from the doctor’s waiting room on Monday morning where she was sporting two big black eyes, a sore Catherine told The Padel Paper: “It hurts a lot! The ball popped up unexpectedly, I reacted and hit myself square between the eyes.
“I just had to carry on and get the job done. You’re going off adrenaline at the time. It is hopefully just bruising and not broken but I’ve got a thumping headache behind my eyes.”
In the men’s final, Alfonso Patacho and Chris Salisbury recovered from a set down against top seeds Sam Jones and Rafael Vega Otaolaurruchi to win 3-6, 6-4, 6-3. Sam had won the title last year but was to be denied a repeat by Alfonso and Chris’ stirring fightback.
Chris told The Padel Paper: “We went a set and a break down and they were definitely the better team, but because we’d won our previous two tournaments we still had belief we would come back and win it. That’s my first win against Sam, so for us that’s probably one of our best wins as a pair.
“Me and Alfonso seem to have found a good partnership. He’s a player who can come up with pretty special shots when we need it most. Hopefully we’ll stick together for the year and we can pick up some more Grade One wins.”
In other weekend action, GB No.1 Christian Murphy and two British female pairs made it into the last 16 of the FIP RISE Betsson Sweden II event in Gothenburg.
Tia Norton and Aimee Gibson got past Nerea Gonzalez and Constanca Gorito in the first round 6-4, 6-2 but went down in the last 16 to second seeds Valentina Tommasi of Italy and Spain’s Lucia Parra 7-5, 6-0. Fellow Brits Abi Tordoff and Lisa Phillips also went out in the round of 16 – 6-0, 6-2 against Lucia Lopez and Aida Sanjuan.
Christian, who partnered Spain’s Belar Vera Lopez, went in as top seed but disappointingly fell 6-3, 7-6 (1) to Joel Oliveira Palos and Romero Valenzuela in the round of 16.
